Botanical Japan

Since I wrote just two days ago, this post will have more information about my regular life here in Japan as well as what I think or am noticing.

On Tuesday I went to the library with Mama Akane to get a library card for me. Yay! It worked! I can now get whatever I want out of the library and stay literate in English! I’m hoping to get out some Japanese children’s books so I can improve my reading. I got out Airframe, by Michael Crichton, and I’m already finished it because it was so good! Hopefully I don’t exhaust the English section of the library in a year…

Yesterday, Mama Akane and I picked up Nanako, Mitsuki, Yuki (Mitsuki’s friend), and Kana (Nanako’s friend). Yuki and Kana are siblings, so it works out quite nicely. We all went to the Kawachinagano botanical garden. 

It was really fun! Earlier in the day, there was heavy rain and wind because of a typhoon that was blowing through and we were not sure if we would be able to go. When we picked them all up, they sun was shining and there was a slight breeze. The botanical garden was very pretty and had tons of plant varieties. In the entrance, there was a huge marigold garden. It felt like being in Minnesota in the fall! We walked around for a while and eventually came to the main greenhouse. It is a huge pyramid structure that is all glass. You can see from a couple kilometers away.

The inside was even hotter than outside! But it was worth it to see all the plants. The greenhouse’s focus is on rare plants, so it was exciting to see everything. My favorite plant that were displaying was Welwitschia, which is a desert plant native to southern Africa. It only has two leaves and it can life for 2,000 years. When I visited my aunt and uncle in Namibia ten years ago, we saw a few Welwitschia in the wild.

The centerpiece of the pyramid is a large indoor waterfall that you can walk behind. There were different orchids around it was well.

There was also a large variety of carnivorous plants that included Honeydew, which are native to Minnesota. Yay! A little piece of home! We had a lot of fun wandering around the botanical gardens. I’m sorry for the bad photos, but I forgot my camera at home and was stuck with my ipod camera. My favorite part of the day was when we were sitting on some benches taking a break. On the trees around us were tons of snails! There had to be at least fifty of them! The trees were covered in a spider-web of slime tracks!

I suppose I haven’t really given a great description of what an average day is like. The truth is, everyday is different and I don’t have a very fixed schedule, but I’ll try my best to organize it.

Monday through Friday I usually attend school from 8:30 to around 3:15. On Tuesdays school ends at 4:15. There are six classes throughout the day with Tuesdays having seven. The classes that I can actually get something out of are PE, Japanese Salon (1-to-1 teaching), and the occasional lesson in biology, chemistry, and math. In all my other classes, I study Japanese. It’s hard to try and learn a bunch of stuff all day and keep focused. There are some classes where I do completely zone out and daydream, but what do you expect when you can’t understand Japanese history and your brain is still processing the Japanese lesson you just read. In PE, we do a weekly rotation. PE occurs on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Mondays are Judo, Wednesdays are soccer, and Fridays are some sort of activity in the gym. In Judo, we really haven’t done a lot yet. It’s mostly just been rolling around and the teacher showing us what we should be able to do by the end of the year. Nonetheless, it’s fun to tumble around and get dizzy! In soccer, we have three different teams. My team is all the boys from my class because there are so few of us and we like to stick together. The other two teams are one class that has been split up. They have a LOT of guys in their class! Each team is nine or ten members. Every week, we have to come up with our own practice plan for the hour. If we don’t have a plan, we have to spend the hour running around the track. It’s great motivation! The field that we play on is all dirt, so after soccer, your school uniform is almost certainly going to need washing just from the dirt transferring from your skin to it.

Japanese Salon basically just an hour of talking in Japanese with my Japanese teacher. We use a textbook to somewhat focus the studies, but when we have practiced one thing for a while, we branch off with it and use it in a conversation. It’s great practice and I feel like I improve greatly after it! That is, until some classmates or a teacher start to talk to me in English. Oh well! It will get there! I think my favorite class of the week is Calligraphy. It’s on Thursdays and is two hours long. Japanese (or Chinese, I guess, since the Japanese got their writing system from them) calligraphy is very difficult. Unlike English calligraphy, it is done with a brush and requires and extremely steady hand. Most of my classmates have no problem making very accurate copies of the template, but I have yet to make something that even resembles the correct characters! I really enjoy the process of creating the characters. To begin, you have to make the ink. To do this, you pour some water onto your ink pallet and, with your ink “block”, you begin to add ink into the water. This turns it black. You rub the ink block on the pallet for about ten minutes to get the right mixture. Once you have the ink prepared, you fold your paper into eight parts that guide you and act as partitions for drawing the characters. You smooth the creases out a little by running a heavy metal rod over it. Then you can begin! It takes patience and a lot of drafts. In an average class, I probably produced around 15 completed masterpieces that aren’t in the slightest readable. It’s still a lot of fun though! At the beginning of each class, the teacher hangs up three or four of the best works from the last class period. My goal for the year is to have one up there.

After school, I usually go to either band or soft tennis club. I think those are pretty self-explanatory. Tennis finishes at 5 and band finishes at 5:30. After that, I walk the two kilometers to the store my host family runs. On Mondays and Tuesdays I get a ride home from my host mom, grandpa or grandma. On Wednesdays and Fridays, My host father drives me to Aikidou class which starts at 6:30 and goes until 7:45. On Thursdays, I walk to a building near the train station for a two hour Japanese class that is held for foreigners. It’s a lot of fun and I’m learning a lot as well as meeting many people. After that it’s homeward bound! Saturdays are usually relatively quiet because it’s still a work day, but Mama Akane, Mitsuki, Nanako, Yoshino, and I usually do something. Sundays are the most fun because we usually do something with the family like go see something. It sometimes involves driving a long ways to see something. I love spending all that time with my family! It makes me feel so welcomed.

That pretty much is how my weeks works with a little bit of change all over the place. Some Fridays I miss part of school to attend Rotary meetings and occasionally school has something prepared for me.

Something else I’ve noticed in Japan is all of the bugs. There are tons and so many of them I have never seen before. I think the one that is most intriguing to me is one that is the size of a small humming-bird (yes, I do realized that they are already small!). It has a large body and a proboscis like a butterfly that it uses to get inside flowers with deep openings. It has a loud thrumming noise as it moves around. I’d love to hear if anyone knows what it is!

Driving through the country is like being in a room with a million crickets. There are so many! At night when it’s quiet, you can hear them with the car windows shut and it sounds like it’s open! It’s absolutely incredible! Unfortunately, I don’t think a lot of Japanese have much appreciation for insects. The most common reaction I’ve seen is to scream and get as far away as possible. Even if it is a harmless butterfly, they are taking no chances. It’s very interesting and I don’t quite understand it. Although, there are certainly times when I do understand it, because there are many species of wasps here. Some of them are at least 3 inches long and have a massive stinger! They are very beautiful I hope I can get a good picture of one to post at some point.

Something I am constantly amazed at is the road system in Japan. There is absolutely nowhere that they will not build a road. I’m curious as to where all the money comes from, because I think that about 25% of the roads are bridges. Another 40% has probably involved the removal or addition of either dirt or concrete so that a flat surface can be achieved. They also don’t seem to care about how big the roads are, either. The smallest road I’ve see had about a foot on either side of a car going down it, and there isn’t just one of those, either. The biggest road is the highway, and that doesn’t even have a shoulder! Sidewalks are only in places where there room between the street and the buildings, otherwise pedestrians have to share the road. I’d say that’s the case 80% percent of the time. Also, there is no grid system. I’m guessing this is because there are so many hills and valleys that it just wouldn’t work. I would also place money on the fact that they are streets that may have been established for several centuries (also before cars), so houses were built where people wanted them. It’s amazing how willing the Japanese are to make car inaccessible places accessible. Most mountains in my area have at least one road going to the top.

I’m going to let that segway into talking about the driving habits of the Japanese. I think I talked about them already early on as I was getting over the shock of it all. Now that I’ve had sometime, I’m realizing that the key to successful driving in Japan is patience. If you are impatient, it will only lead to a possible traffic accident, which only makes the day worse for everyone because you can’t pull over anywhere to access the damage and have to do so in the middle of the road. If someone is trying to pull out into traffic, everyone lets them quickly. If you are traveling down a one-lane road, you have to be ready to pull over at any moment to let others pass. If you are impatient, you might cause someone’s house damage. It’s an incredible system where everyone works together to achieve the highest possible efficiency as well as satisfaction for everyone.

I’ll take this moment to a little self check-up. So far, my year has been fantastic. It’s a lot of fun being able to meet new people and see new places. I’m really connecting with my first host family and I’m so glad that I’m able to stay with them. Right now, my moving date is actually being discussed. It will either be on November 10 or 17; both Sundays. It will be sad to change houses, but it will also be a new chapter of this adventure! In school, I’ve been talking with more and more people in my class. Everyone is very nice and excited to talk to me in Japanese. I am a little worried about connecting as fully as I can. I’ve been fitting in ok, but I haven’t made strong relationships yet. It seems that no one really knows what to do with an exchange student or exactly why I am here. I think some of my problems come from talking so much English with my friend Ron from Australia. It has been great that he is there to help me translate, but I need to start speaking with other students more in Japanese. I have been feeling some twangs of homesickness, but I don’t expect a full on landslide of emotions. I felt some of that while I was on my canoe trip this summer as I thought about the upcoming year and I’m hoping that was all I will deal with. Having the other exchange students here will help since we all know exactly the way each other is feeling. I’m so happy that I am able to have this experience! It is amazing and it is opening my eyes to new cultures and ways that things are done. I’m trying to keep an open mind so I can experience everything without having a bias against it.

Here's a silly picture to break the monotony or reading.

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any questions!

またね！

Wes